


Follow Me

by Joking611



Series: Cari'ssi'mi Drabbles [14]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Cari'ssi'mi, F/F, Fictober 2019, Fluff, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 17:11:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20933786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joking611/pseuds/Joking611
Summary: Shepard goes on a run with the commandos. They decide to teach her something.





	Follow Me

**Author's Note:**

> Fictober 2019 prompt #2 - “Just follow me, I know the area.”
> 
> Takes place somewhere around chapters 21-23 of Fragments in Cari'ssi'mi

“Just follow me, Peeress. I know the area.”

_‘Gee thanks,’ _thought Sarah even as she suppressed a snide remark. “I didn’t think that we were in danger of getting lost,” she huffed. “I’ve run this trail every day for two weeks, and I’ve managed to make it home each time.” She waved at the forest around them. “Besides, we’re surrounded by commandos.”

“Hardly surrounded, Sarah,” countered Teseka, her voice giving no concession to their pace. “There are no more than forty huntresses running this afternoon.”

“Fine, so there’s a lot fewer than during the morning PT,” acknowledged Sarah. “That doesn’t mean that we’re alone out here. Technically we haven’t even left the estate.” She looked around, realizing for the first time that she could only see six other commandos, and all were pulling away from her. She stepped up her pace. She might be running with the more elite members of the House guard, but that didn’t mean she was going to be Tail-end Charlie. Not willingly, at any rate.

Teseka matched her pace. “Did you intend to remain on the path, Peeress?” The maiden’s tone was only lightly teasing.

Shepard knew that for a change, the phrase wasn’t a euphemism. She looked down at the dirt trail beneath her feet, flat and level from the hundreds of asari feet that ran on it every morning. She glanced at her companion. “Meaning I _shouldn’t_ be,” she answered with some cynicism.

“You are free to do whatever you prefer, of course.” Teseka’s eyes were shining with challenge.

Fortunately Sarah still had enough breath to sigh. “All right, lay it on me. What did I let myself in for this time?”

Teseka knew what she meant, having spent enough time with Sarah by this time that she was almost as familiar with human idiom as Denai. “You mentioned that you weren’t feeling challenged by the morning run that many of the staff partake in.”

True enough. The path through the forest was wide, but so many members of the household took part in a morning run that she found it annoyingly crowded. Additionally, the pace could be described as a jog at best, and there was a great deal of conversation. All of which Sarah found distracting. It was fine for helping her get the blood flowing in the morning, but she preferred to tune out her surroundings when she exercised, and found it difficult to do so over the commotion.

There may also been comments about her singing.

“Maintaining the integrity of the forest is also a consideration,” continued Teseka. “Which is why such activity is restricted to marked paths.” She indicated the empty path before them. “Huntresses with more advanced training and experience leave little trace as a result of their activities. Like you, remaining on marked paths does little to hone their abilities. Seldom would a huntress regularly follow an identical route through the forest when she trains.”

_‘Good thing I’m not in my armor,’_ thought Shepard. The boots alone would absolutely obliterate the forest floor, but that wasn’t the only consideration. She looked down at her tank top, shorts and running shoes as she considered the asari she followed, all of them well protected in their commando leathers. _‘I might not be so lucky.’_ She had a lot of skin exposed to be running through the brush.

“Peeress, no one expects anything of you that you are uncomfortable with,” Teseka reassured her. 

That was enough of a prod to spur her into action. Shepard took a sharp right off the trail, cutting off Teseka. She used the sun as a guide, heading in the direction of the clearing used as the turnaround point in their exercises. Teseka followed without a word.

The terrain was uneven, but not rugged. It wasn’t exactly farmland, but Sarah quickly decided she was in little danger of falling or twisting an ankle. Her newfound assurance was almost immediately tested as a low branch drew along her thigh, drops of blood collecting along the scratch.

She winced almost imperceptibly, but didn’t break stride. What was a scratch, anyway? She’d had more than her share of bullet wounds. If she’d been in combat, she’d never have noticed the slight pain.

“Perhaps a barrier, Peeress?” Offered Teseka helpfully.

Now she was certain Teseka was messing with her. The maiden never called her peeress when they were alone, but today it had been almost non stop. “Aren’t I supposed to be following you?” She answered, ignoring the question.

“You seem confident in your route.”

“Teseka…”

"There is no “correct” route, Peeress, and continuing in this direction will take us to the turnaround.”

“Fine.” Sarah decided not to raise a barrier. No matter how light, she didn’t think she could maintain it for the forty-five minutes or so it would take them to return to the arena so she could shower. Sarah couldn’t feel the scratch anymore anyway. 

They ran in silence for a time, Shepard pushing herself hard enough that she was closing on several of the commandos, albeit slowly.

Suddenly one of them charged, at the periphery of her vision. Sarah glanced around, looking for any threats.

“What was that?”

Teseka shrugged. “A ditch, perhaps? Or some other irregularity of landscape?”

Shepard shot her a glare.

“I do not know, Peeress. Huntresses will try to follow the most direct path possible. Leaping over an obstacle will only cause them to break their stride. This way her pace was maintained.”

“I thought they were trying to be quiet too, not light up the forest like a Christmas tree.” Sarah was a little self conscious that she seemed to be making more noise than the rest of the group combined.

If Teseka didn’t know what a Christmas tree was, she gave no indication. “They are making no particular effort to silence, Peeress. Their relative quiet is just… the nature of things.”

Sparring in the afternoons had warped her perception, Sarah realized. In the artificial environs of contrived combat, she could hold her own against the House guard, and more! But here, when there were no rules and it was every woman for herself, the excellence that came from centuries of experience was evident. Sarah had defeated any number of asari mercenaries in her career, but she was only now coming to realize the difference between a hundred and fifty year old kid in an Eclipse uniform, and a matron that had been wearing the leathers of a commando since before humans invented the flushing toilet.

Well, she was still stubborn.

The next few minutes brought her even with the rearmost handful of commandos, spread across a range of perhaps seventy or eighty yards. She only had a moment to feel good about _that_, before realizing that by having left the path, she would have to cross a somewhat large river nowhere near a bridge.

She sped up. The commandos would be facing the same difficulty, and they had to have a way across. She wondered if a charge would be the answer to this obstacle as well. The distance would be long even for her, but maybe if she angled _up_, the arc would carry her over.

She was about to test her theory when a commando to her left threw a barrier out over the water and _leapt to it_. The commando flung barriers ahead of her path as fast as her strides could carry her, each one dissipating the instant she stepped away. The amount of coordination required was _insane_.

Two other commandos had started across, using the same method, as Sarah reached the water’s edge. 

_‘I can do that. No problem,’ _she thought in a burst of false confidence. Dark energy wreathed her arm as she created a barrier around nothing, as far in front of her as she could reasonably leap. She jumped to it, already lining up the next one, when instead of landing on the barrier, she passed through it as if it didn’t exist.

She barely had time to prepare for the water when nausea overcame her as she was wrapped in a powerful pull by the commando who had just reached the other side. In moments she was on the opposite shore, the commando catching her arm to steady her.

“Are you all right, Peeress?” She asked.

“Uh, yeah?” She looked back at the river she’d been saved from, then back to her rescuer. “Thanks, um…”

“Kaedra, Peeress.”

“Thank you, Kaedra.” Shepard took a step back form the tall asari, her balance regained. “That was quick thinking.”

“No one makes it across the first time, Peeress,” laughed Kaedra reassuringly. “Nor the second or third, for that matter. It takes time to master the balance of barrier strength with personal mass.” She grinned. “It didn’t look like you reduced your mass at all.”

She hadn’t, of course. It almost never occurred to her to use her biotics on herself, only on others. It was a habit that Poena hadn’t been able to train out of her. “I’d never even heard of doing that with a barrier before.”

“Teseka assured us that wouldn’t keep you from trying it,” Kaedra indicated the other asari as she joined them. 

Shepard turned to her guard. “You knew?”

“That’s why we hung back,” Kaedra replied, answering for Teseka. “It wouldn’t do for us to bring you back with a broken limb. Iadri wouldn’t approve.”

Sarah’s focus remained on Teseka. “This whole thing was a setup? You couldn’t tell me ahead of time? You knew I wouldn’t make it, so you have a whole commando team _babysitting_ me?” The fact that she ended up needing to be saved didn’t do anything for what was left of her pride. _At all_.

“No one knows the first time, Sarah,” answered Teseka.

“That’s the point.” Added Kaedra. “A huntress doesn’t hesitate. We all landed in the river the first time. You would have too, so don’t feel bad. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Don’t feel bad for _not_ falling in the river?”

“Exactly!” Kaedra clapped her on the shoulder as the other commandos gathered around. “You didn’t get wet, but the intent was there.” She turned to the other commandos, who offered additional encouragement.

“There will be drinking when we return to the estate, Peeress,” whispered Teseka.

Sarah’s eyes widened. “Are you kidding me? I’m being _hazed_?”

“_Vu’dini_,” corrected Kaedra. “One from many. But only if you’re not the last one back.” As one, the commandos turned and resumed their run.

“I’m coming back here, you know,” said Shepard to Teseka as she hurried to follow. “I am going to make it across.”

“They know, Sarah. That’s what makes you a huntress.”


End file.
